I Have Loved You For A Thousand Years
by CereuleanBlue
Summary: written for the FGB Auction 2011.  Alice/Jasper Canon.  Their first meeting from Jasper's POV.  Bit of a lemonish ending.


**A/N: I was struggling with this until I found the perfect song for it. "A Thousand Years" by Christina Perri. It's just amazing how great a fit it actually is, and I'm thrilled that I decided to mess around with listening to the Breaking Dawn Soundtrack on YouTube and found it. Thanks to wendy5542 for purchasing my services in the FGB auction. I sincerely hope this is what you wanted and worth the money that you put up for it. **

Playlist: A Thousand Years - Christina Perri

Marry Me – Train

Flightless Bird, American Mouth – Iron & Wine

If It's Love – Train

Moonlight Serenade – Glenn Miller Orchestra

-x-x-x-

"I have died every day waiting for you

Darling don't be afraid I have loved you

For a thousand years

I'll love you for a thousand more.

And all along I believed I would find you

Time has brought your heart to me

I have loved you for a thousand years

I'll love you for a thousand more."

_-A Thousand Years_ by Christina Perri

-x-x-x-

I could smell the coming rain in the air before any of the humans around me had a clue that it was imminent. It had been too easy to give in to the temptation to take advantage of the overcast sky that morning. It had been weeks since the Philadelphia weather had given me the opportunity to be out during the daylight hours, even if the light was filtered through the dark gray clouds. It was still marvelous to feel the warmth on my skin after so many days spent in hiding, and the thirst that raged through my throat at the scent of each passing heart meant that my eyes were dark enough to go unnoticed.

I risked the lure of the humans that streamed down the street around me. Each drift of air that passed a thrumming human heart sent a shiver through me as I fought to maintain my composure when one of them unknowingly strayed a little too close for my comfort, and I was relieved when the crowds thinned out a bit as the working day began in earnest and left only myself and a few stragglers on the streets.

Not that I had any real business that required me to be out this time of the day. I just _needed_ to be out, something called me, some siren song that only my ears seemed to hear. Even I wasn't certain what had driven me to leave the abandoned house I'd occupied in the kind of neighborhood where my night time coming and goings would go unnoticed amongst the human rabble and refuse that called the area home. I was normally content to remain in one spot, acutely aware of the danger that being out in the day meant for me and my kind and fully aware of what any of the human beings who filled the world around me would do to my kind given the first opportunity. Not to mention the other immortals that wandered the world at random and would take advantage of anyone who let their guard down for too long.

When the first rain drops began to fall, I was tempted to just remain on the street, but I could already feel the odd looks people began to give me when I didn't run for shelter immediately. Ducking into the first available doorway, I found myself if a quiet little out of the way diner. Since it was still early in the day, the only other patron of the establishment was a tiny girl with shockingly short black hair, sitting at the counter next to a piping hot cup of coffee that appeared to have been freshly filled.

Almost immediately, my instincts told me to leave this place as quickly as I possibly could. The scent that filled the air put every fiber of every nerve in my body on edge and sent venom zinging across my tongue. It was a simple thing for me to recognize another of my kind, and I was frankly amazed that I hadn't known she was here as soon as I walked into the room. It was dark but not dark enough to hide the faint glimmer of the overhead lights on her skin as she turned slowly on the stool to face me. I poised readying myself for an attack, but what happened next was something I could never imagine.

Her beauty froze me in place and stole my breath in the same moment. Her face was the most startling part of her because it was there that I found her eyes. Those eyes, the color of honey in sunlight, were the last thing that I ever expected to see. Black as night or red as freshly spilled blood, those were the colors I was accustomed to seeing set in the face of every other being of my kind I had ever encountered. It was alarming and disarming all at once, and my mind swam with the all the possible reactions that I could have had to this situation.

My spinning thoughts kept me pinned in place as she descended as delicately as a ballet dancer from the stool and made her way soundlessly across the floor to where I stood. The smile on her face relaxed my tensed muscles. It was friendly and warm, the kind of smile you reserved for your favorite person on the face of the planet instead of a stranger you just met in a nearly deserted diner in the middle of a rain storm. The emotions that were radiating off her were full of the most amazing feelings I had experienced in quite awhile. Overwhelming joy, almost ecstatic, and a flood of relief, like she'd finally found something that she had been waiting forever for and was beginning to believe would never actually arrive. She was as impatient as a child on Christmas morning as she made her way across the floor towards me, and it took every ounce of restraint she had to keep from running towards me full speed and embracing me right then and there.

There was no uncertainty in this little girl; that was the one emotion she didn't seem to possess as she came to a stop directly in front of me.

"You've kept me waiting a long time," she said, the smile broadening on her face as her lyrical voice hit my ears for the first time. There was something oddly familiar about this tiny being that stood here in front of me, like I'd known her in another lifetime, and her words did nothing to help the feeling that we'd met before. But nothing immediately came to mind when I tried to place her face in my memories, not even in the dim human memories that I'd retained after my transformation.

So, I replied with the first thing that came to mind, after all I'd been raised to be something of a gentleman. Tipping my head down slightly, I answered, "I'm sorry, ma'am."

The laughter that issued from between her perfect smile reminded me of the tinkling of bells, and I could feel my heart jump in my chest at the sound of it. She reached up to take my hand, and without thinking, I allowed it, lacing my fingers in between hers. Surprisingly, the fit was ideal, and the contact of her skin on mine brought a startling feeling that wrapped around my entire body like a blanket. For the first time in more years than I could count, I could feel hope, flooding through every part of me, and it brought a smile unbidden to my face that rivaled hers.

"Hi, I'm Alice, and you're Jasper. I feel like I've been waiting for you for a thousand years. If I hadn't known you were going to be here this morning, I'd have thought you were never coming."

For a second, the world felt like it was complete for the first time in my existence. Every piece of every puzzle clicked into place, and everything made sense finally. Everything I had been through, everything I had done, everything that had been done to me was leading up to this moment in time when my being would become complete, and I realized I'd known the essence of who this girl was for longer than I'd even been alive.

She pulled me gently by the hand that joined us to a table in a darkened, abandoned corner of the diner, and for the next hour the rest of the world waited patiently while she told me about her life. It was almost as if I could have told parts of the story myself, but I sat silently, rapt while she spoke, not sure I wanted it to end.

She knew nothing of her life before her transformation, and while my own memories of my human life were dim and fuzzy, I could remember enough details to retain some idea of who I had been – my childhood, being a young man in antebellum Texas, my time in the military, meeting Maria. That was my short life story. I was barely more than a boy when Maria happened upon me that night, but Alice – that was her name, Alice – knew nothing of herself.

You would have thought that was enough to drive any of us insane, but not her.

I'd known for a long time that there were those of our kind who had special abilities, being numbered among their ranks for almost a century now, and I suspected something like this about Alice from the moment I set eyes on her. Her eye color, her self-assuredness, her ability to predict my words before they ever left my mouth, all bespoke something extra about this raven-haired beauty than could be seen with the naked eye.

I had a million questions boiling about in my mind and honestly couldn't figure out which one I wanted to ask first. Eventually, I decided to just let her talk, because she seemed to know everything I was wondering about and ticked the questions off in my mind one by one.

"I know you are wondering how I know you. How I knew you would be here."

I simply nodded. There was no other reply to that question, but the look on my face must have driven her to laughter. I could feel the happiness radiating off her like the heat from the sun that I missed so much during the middle of each night.

"After my transformation, I woke up, not knowing who I was, where I was. The first thing I thought of was your face, sitting here, and I just knew without a doubt that you loved me," she told me with a coy look on her face. "At first, I thought I was dreaming, but I knew one thing for certain, you existed and I needed to find you." I could believe anything she told me, but I needed to hear more about this.

"I'm starting to wonder if all of this is a dream, myself. I barely even know your name, but here I am sitting with you like we're the oldest friends in the world. If I didn't know better, I'd swear I was sleeping." I stroked the upturned palm of her hand with the pad of my index finger.

"You're not dreaming, or maybe both of us are," she smiled contentedly as she spoke. "I was starting to wonder if this day would ever come, myself, but I've seen it so many times in my head. This very diner, this table, knowing exactly what I would say to you when I saw you. I don't even remember my own human life, but I know this is the place we are both supposed to be right now."

She took a breath, and I felt some trepidation creep into her, replacing it with the courage she had given me what seemed like only a few moments ago, I took her hand completely in mine. "What's wrong?"

She shook her head for a second before replying, "Nothing, I swear. It's all going to work out fine." She smiled, relief replacing the fear that had flashed through her. "The rest of our family is waiting for us."

"Family?" I didn't imagine I could be much more confused than I had been earlier, but her statement knocked me for a loop. I'd never been part of any family to speak of. Maria hadn't been much in the way of a friend, much less family. I shuddered, thinking of the things the last group of vampires I'd been involved with had gotten up to in the name of a family.

"You don't like that word very much, do you?" She reached up, gently brushing the hair back from my forehead and forcing me to look upwards into her eyes.

I knew in that moment that I trusted her explicitly. If she said things would be alright, if she said we had a family waiting for us, that we didn't have to feed off humans to survive, I would follow her – straight into the mouth of hell itself if she told me we would come out the other side unscathed. "I've had some bad experiences with what some of us might call a family, my dear."

"It's okay, I swear. They're nothing like anything either of us have ever seen before, Jazz. Just wait and see." The rapturous expression on her face made her look like an angel, and for a moment I felt a measure of the faith that she had in her visions. I didn't even mind the shortening of my name; it wasn't something I would have tolerated from anyone else, but from her it seemed like a compliment.

We sat for a moment without speaking, until someone in the diner dropped a nickel into the jukebox over in the corner of the room and _Moonlight Serenade _came flooding into the air. Alice pulled me onto the floor next to our table, despite the fact that there was no dance floor here, I couldn't help wrapping my arm around her waist and taking her hand in mine as we both began to sway to the music.

The rest of the world ground to a halt around us. Normally, I have a very acute awareness of the others around me, both from a feeling of needing to be on my toes and from actively sensing their emotions, but for this moment in time, there was no one else in the universe but the two of us. I had never felt anything like this. Her emotions mirrored an amplified my own, until I felt ready to burst with happiness, hope, and love.

Gradually another feeling crept in, one that I had been intimately familiar with at various points in my life, but never so strongly as now. I'd swear my body felt warm with the heat that was radiating from her alone, even though I knew that both of us were still cool to the touch. Gathering all my concentration for a moment, I sent a wave of feeling towards her to show her exactly what I was experiencing.

For a second, it seemed like her legs were going to buckle beneath her, but I supported her weight in my arm for the few moments it took for her to regain enough composure to stand squarely on two feet again. She laughed.

"Do that again, Mr. Whitlock, and I'm not responsible for my behavior."

I ran a hand through the hair above her ear, moving slowly to the nape of her neck and leaning my face down towards hers. The air between us was filled with the zing of static electricity as our lips touched for the first time. The contact between us connected us even more tightly than before, so there was no way I could hold back anything I was experiencing from her or block her emotions from my consciousness. Not that I would have wanted to, because the things that ran through my mind at the thought of her were far from those a decent gentleman should be having about any young lady, much less one he had just met.

"Let's go." She pulled me over to the table, leaving more than enough money to pay for the untouched cups of coffee we left behind us, and I followed her blindly out into the blinkingly brilliant sunlight beyond. The sun had risen higher in the sky and the clouds of the morning had cleared leaving a sapphire blue sky behind them.

We stayed close under the awnings and shadows of the buildings that lined the streets, making our way to a much nicer part of town than I had been residing in, finally coming to a stop on the corner of Broad and Walnut Streets in front of the Bellevue Stratford Hotel. She paused for a moment, uncertain.

"This is where I'm staying. Would you like to come up for a nightcap, Mr. Whitlock?" She grinned, mischeviously. "I already know you're going to say yes, so you can cut out the shy act right now. And I already know it's the middle of the afternoon; it's a figure of speech." She tweaked my nose, playfully.

"Well, ma'am. It would be rude of me to refuse such an attractive young lady, so I suppose I'll just have to join you for a drink." I spoke, knowing full well that drinking was the last thing on both our minds.

The walk through the lobby of the hotel seemed to take forever, when in reality it could only have taken a few minutes. It was a big lobby, and she did stop at the front desk to check for messages under the name of Mary Braddock. The elevator doors seemed to be miles from the front doors and were achingly slow to close, but as soon as they did we turned to face each other, our bodies clicking together like magnets. Fortunately, we were alone on the elevator for the moment, because I don't think anything could have stopped what was going on between us once it began. It would have been a shame to have to have witnesses to spoil any second of it.

Her arms twined around me like the creepers of the vines that grew in the forest around my childhood home, clinging on for dear life as though I were her only hope for survival. We bumped around in the confined space for a moment until we found a corner to prop ourselves up in for the remainder of our ascent. Hopefully, the dents we left behind in the rails and paneling weren't too difficult to explain away or repair. I can't explain what she tasted like to me, because it would be impossible to understand unless you were there in the moment, something like a combination of love, sunshine, and freedom. It was an intoxicating combination, and I was drunk with her in an instant.

Time seemed to speed up once our bodies came into contact with each other, because it was a mercilessly short period of time before the ding of the doors opening onto the eleventh floor. There was only one door in sight of the elevator, and Alice made her way over to it, deftly twisting the key she produced from her pocket in the lock and opening the door.

It would have been easy to be distracted by the beauty of the famed Royal Suite of what had been considered the world's finest hotel, if I hadn't had something infinitely more exquisite in front of me to draw my attention to exactly where it should be. I knew there was a bedroom somewhere amongst the maze of rooms that we were in, and almost as if she read my mind she steered our conjoined bodies towards a door off to the left side of the parlor we had entered into.

Her back hit the wall, and I could hear wood splintering beneath our weight. Ignoring the sound, I groped for the handle I knew to be somewhere slight to her right. Fumbling across the door, my fingers finally stumbled across the handle which I nearly ripped from the door in my haste to get it open.

The robin's egg blue walls were a blur as we moved for the bed at something close to the speed of sound, sending various bits of furniture tumbling about the room in our rush. I could feel what it did to her every time my hand brushed across her body, and how every time our lips came together it set her entire brain on fire. Her feelings fed into mine driving my mind into a frenzy that made me blind to anything and everything except what was happening between the two of us.

Her hands reached up, gripping my shirt on either side of the buttons, and with one swift move, she sent every button flying in various directions around the room, discarding the tattered remains of the white cotton on the carpet. Her hands gripped at my bare shoulders wildly, sending each of my nerves into overdrive.

My fingers found their way to her top, fumbling with each of her buttons to keep from damaging the delicate piece of fabric. I could sense her frustration when she groaned and leant up on her elbows to whisper in my ear.

"Just rip it." The grin on her face told me everything I needed to know. Within seconds I was repeating the motions of her hands a few minutes earlier. Once we were started it took less time than you might expect to divest both of us of all our clothes. Pieces of cotton and silk littered the bed and floor and rained down from the air around us like snow drifting from the winter sky.

I made myself stop then to look at her absolute perfection, no longer hidden by the beautiful although concealing clothing she had worn to the diner. She was magnificent, something to be worshiped, and I felt the need to worship every inch of her overwhelm me.

She laughed again, that sound like a melody to my ears. "You've got all eternity to look at me Jasper Whitlock. I promise."

Eternity. Before today, that had seemed like a daunting prospect, trudging through all of history alone, even in a room full of people. Now, it seemed like not even forever would be long enough with this angel.

My hands roamed over her marble-like skin, finding each and every inch under my fingertips, getting to know the one being that I knew I could spend forever with. Each and every sigh taught me something about her, about what she liked and what she craved. I took his time exploring her body, feeling along with her the result of all my attentions.

After what seemed like ten eternities, Alice flipped me over on his back with an impish grin. "Now, it's my turn."

Somehow, she seemed to know my most sensitive areas without asking along with the perfect way to drive me absolutely insane with desire for her. I gripped the edge of the headboard to restrain myself from taking her immediately and felt a part of it give way and crumble into dust in the palm of my hand.

When her lips found my chest, I couldn't stop myself from letting her know exactly how it felt, and the little moan that escaped her lips was too much to take. I couldn't wait a moment longer to make her completely mine.

Rolling over, I pressed her back into the bed, and just like she'd read my mind, her legs wrapped around my waist welcoming me into her. In that one instant the pair of us were complete – the two missing pieces of a puzzle coming together at last. We melted together, so close that it was impossible to tell where one of us ended and the other one began.

Each thrust was like coming home, to a home I hadn't even known existed until today, but that couldn't have been a more perfect place for me. It was as if she had been created just for me, my soul mate in every sense of the word, even if I didn't exactly believe that I still had a soul. This was enough to make me change my mind, because there was no way anyone who had been damned for all eternity would be given a perfect angel like this to own him body, mind and soul.

The pressure building in my body felt as if it would make me explode, leaving pieces of me strewn about the universe to go into the building of new stars and galaxies, and I would have died for the second time a happy man if that had been the case. I pulled her closer to me, feeling like something was wrong if there was even one particle of air between the two of us. Her body tensed around me, and the two of us died together for a few moments, hanging in between this world and the next while the rest of the world imploded around us.

We lay in the bed with the sheets swirled around us, like a pair of nesting birds coming down from the ultimate high. Her fingertips trailed lightly along my chest, leaving trails of fire in their wake.

"You trying to start something else, darlin'?"

The smile she shot me, set my whole body on fire, and the wave of lust that came along with it sent a growl to my lips as I pounced on her and pinned her shoulders to the mattress.

That day was the beginning of the best part of my life, before or after my "death."

**A/N: If you can spot the Doctor Who reference in this fic you win ten internets. **

**Because I couldn't find any pictures of the interior of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, I used the Royal Suite in the Waldorf Astoria in New York as inspiration. They were owned by the same company for some period of time, so I assumed the décor would be similar. **

**Special thanks to sbgdgt for talking me through this one and helping me figure out exactly how this would have gone down. Couldn't have done this without you. ;) **


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